MUSIC TOOK HIM FROM CATSKILLS TO BROADWAY

Saunders, who started as a Borsht Belt musician in the Catskill Mountains of New York when he was 12 years old, was the person who hired the composer who wrote the popular title song for the Michael Todd movie Around the World in 80 Days.

The rest is history. The song he commissioned became a classic. Todd and his widow, Elizabeth Taylor, became famous. And Saunders, now 73, retired with his wife of 48 years and their memories to the Hollybrook condominium in Pembroke Pines.

"It was a ball, a real ball," said the man who played drums for Al Jolson on Broadway, Arthur Godfrey on radio and the Hit Parade on television. "Show business was enjoyable and kind to me. Show business doesn't owe me a thing."

Even so, he said he doesn't miss the life much.

"Frankly, I'm so busy now I don't. I'm on the board of directors of Hollybrook, greens chairman and golf liaison officer for the association, play golf three times a week and play tennis three times a week," he said.

Saunders traces his musical background to his beginnings. He was in the orchestras of his elementary school, P.S. 144, and Alexander Hamilton High School in New York City. During the summer, he played drums for dance orchestras in the Borsht Belt

At 16, while still in school, he started playing drums at night for the Yiddish Theater, a collection of nine theaters in New York City. That's where he met his wife, Phyllis, now 70.

Phyllis, who grew up in a show business family, was dancing in Chester Hale's chorus line at the Capitol Theater in New York when the line was disbanded. She was out of work, but found another dancing job at the Yiddish Theater.

In 1935 or 1936, the drummer and dancer met. In 1938 they formed a lasting duo that produced two children and two grandchildren.

After their marriage, Phyllis Saunders got out of show business. Her husband, meanwhile, broke away from the Yiddish Theater and went to the Great White Way. His first big Broadway show was the 1940 production of Hold Onto Your Hats, starring Al Jolson.

"He was a tough guy, he either hated you or he liked you," Saunders said. "He liked me. We became personal friends."

After the show closed, Saunders became the "trouble-shooter of Broadway" by moonlighting as a substitute drummer for Broadway shows. As a house musician for radio station WINS, he played for morning programs, leaving his nights free.

"When the drummer for a Broadway show got sick and couldn't play, they'd call the radio station and I'd go in cold, never having seen the music or show," he said.

After two years at the station, taking advantage of his ability to play "cold," he became a free-lance percussionist, working for the best conductors of the day. As a free-lancer he came up with the sound effects for composer Leroy Anderson that are still heard today on such recordings as the Typewriter Song and Syncopated Clock, which for 20 years was the theme for the CBS Television late show.

"Leroy wrote Typewriter for a wood block, but I said, 'Leroy, let's use a real typewriter.' I ordered a very old, noisy typewriter for the recording session. We tried it once, went for a take and we got it in one take," he said.

Saunders also played at recording sessions for Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and Bing Crosby. He played for Arthur Godfrey on radio and the Hit Parade and Paul Winchell on television. He played for as many as 12 commercial radio and TV programs a week and for the first advertising jingles, including "Pepsi- Cola hits the spot" and Murial Cigar's "Come up and see me some time."

He was so busy that he had three sets of drums ready in three different studios, scurrying from one to the other. He worked sometimes from 9 a.m. to midnight seven days a week. His children didn't get to see him often.

Neither Donna, a school librarian, nor Reubin, who was a businessman, went into show business.

"We discouraged it," Phyllis Saunders said.

"Show busines is tough. How many people really make it?" said Jack Saunders.

In 1948, through his wife's father, then the executive director of the Friars Club, Jack Saunders met producer Mike Todd and started a relationship that lasted until Todd was killed in a plane crash in 1958. He started as a musician for Todd's company and, in about 1950, became personnel manager and then vice president. He also served as general manager of the music company owned by Todd's wife, Elizabeth Taylor.

As Todd's music director, "Anything that pertained to music had to go through me," he said. "I was responsible for getting Victor Young to compose the score for Around the World in 80 Days. I felt he was the man most qualified, I recommended him and Mr. Todd went along."

One of the four Oscars won by the picture went to Young for best score.

The Todd-Saunders relationship had another lasting effect. In the early 1950s, they helped develop Cinerama, the three-projector movie process that led to the rebirth of the movie industry, development of wide-screen processes and stereo sound for movies.

"We both saw the Cinerama experiment and he fell in love with the idea," Saunders said. "Movies were going downhill; the industry was practically dead because of TV."

Todd later helped develop a single-projector 70mm process, Todd-AO, which became popular.

Saunders also was musical director for the Oct. 17, 1957, party at Madison Square Garden that Todd and Taylor gave to celebrate the first anniversary of Around the World in 80 Days. Saunders hired the NBC Symphony, Arthur Fiedler and Duke Ellington's band to entertain the 78,000 guests at the highly publicized event.

After Todd's death, Saunders stayed with Mike Todd Jr., also a producer, for two years, then went into business with his wife composing music for 300 old movie comedies and distributing them to television stations.

In 1969 he divorced himself from music to become president of an electronics company. He left in 1972 and moved to Palm Beach Gardens as sales and promotion director for a development company. Four years later, after his son died of cancer at age 37, he retired and moved to Hollybrook, packing his drums and his dreams into a closet.

"After our son died he wasn't interested in the drums anymore," Phyllis Saunders said.

With the exception of one night a year, the Hollybrook Players amateur night, he hasn't touched those drums since.